


I KNOW / THANK YOU FOR TELLING ME

by faedemon



Series: oh, for one sweet second without the eye [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Asking & Telling, Character Study, Gen, Jon Can't Cook, M/M, Self-Hatred, beholding likes jon!, but it's still kinda like. nice? in a way?, coming to terms, set mostly in s4, slight meta? but like its part of the narrative, this ended up not as fluffy as i intended it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24460156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faedemon/pseuds/faedemon
Summary: Knowing a secret doesn’t matter as much if the secret-holder still thinks it’s private.Knowingis as much being told as it is beholding.Beholding does notlikein the way humans do, but it likes its Archivist all the same.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, The Beholding & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: oh, for one sweet second without the eye [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791034
Comments: 37
Kudos: 232





	I KNOW / THANK YOU FOR TELLING ME

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the apple of the eye](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24398515) by [gocrazygostupid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gocrazygostupid/pseuds/gocrazygostupid). 



> DON'T ask me when in the timeline the first bit takes place, i don't know, i just wanted martin to be there ok?? also there's a couple direct quotes taken from MAG 160 at the end.
> 
> anyway. this fic is inspired by the apple of the eye by gocrazygostupid (and the title is a quote from it!) because it's BEAUTIFUL and i love the concept of beholding speaking directly to jon? it didn't turn out quite like that in this fic but i didn't want to totally copy their style so here we are. i love love love the apple of the eye so much, highly recommend!!

“I DID NOT KNOW YOU LIKED ME

you didn’t?

YOU DID NOT TELL ME  
HOW WAS I TO LEARN”

“and green is my favorite color.

I KNOW  
THANK YOU FOR TELLING ME”

“why did you ask, like you didn’t already know?

I ENJOY IT WHEN YOU TELL ME THINGS, ARCHIVIST”

\- the apple of the eye by gocrazygostupid

* * *

Beholding knows everything and Jon is and is not Beholding. Jon knows everything.

“What pasta shape is your favorite?” Jon asks Martin, who is over for dinner. He is deciding what to make. Martin is contemplating taking over the kitchen, as he is not convinced Jon can cook.

“Couldn’t you just Know that?” Martin asks, instead of answering. Of course Jon could. He already always has. Martin’s favorite pasta shape is bowties.

“Yes. But I want you to tell me.” Jon doesn’t have bowties in his cabinet. He doesn’t have much of anything in his cabinet.

“I like the bowties. They’re cute,” Martin says after a moment, and Jon nods.

“I don’t have those. Is rigatoni okay?” he asks, turning around and shaking the box. The rattling sound is pleasing.

Martin smiles, shaking his head a little. “That’s fine. Can I help?” He is already standing up. Martin does not behold. He knows Jon despite it. Jon will say yes.

“Sure. Help me with the sauce?”

“Okay.”

Beholding does not speak in any way that matters, but it can communicate regardless. At a tape’s _click_ , Jon will become alert. A stray thought he recognizes as not his own he will pay attention to. For all that Jon tries to disdain his patron’s influence, he listens every time.

Jon walks along a path by a park. It is not very pretty, but it’s outdoors, and there are flowers planted along the sidewalk. Jon does not go outside as much as he should. Beholding likes its avatars to be healthy.

Jon has never been here before. Most of the parks he went to were in his youth, in Bournemouth. For as long as he has lived in London for work, Jon has never explored much. Beholding wants him to explore. There is much in London to See.

A woman in a uniform is planting flowers farther down the sidewalk. Jon hardly notices her, crouched down as she is. Beholding notices her. It nudges Jon’s gaze downward to look.

Jon Knows that this woman has been working since early morning. She was mowing the park’s grass earlier, and after this, will go look at the playscape at the center of the park to make sure nothing is broken or threatening to break. Her water bottle ran out an hour ago. She is thirsty.

“They’re pretty,” Jon says when he reaches her. She looks up, startled. She has one earbud in. She is listening to a podcast. “The flowers, I mean.”

The woman is in her late 40s. She is tired of her job, and does not care much for flowers. “Oh, thank you, but it’s just my job, I’m afraid.” She smiles at Jon. Jon is not a child, and he is graying and is scarred, but she looks at him and thinks him young anyway.

“Are you thirsty?” Jon asks. There is a coffee shop just across the road.

The woman pauses for a moment, debating how to answer. She does not want to seem like she’s complaining. “Hard not to be, with the heat.” It is quite warm, for London.

“I can get you water, if you like,” Jon offers.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that—”

“It’s no trouble. Really.”

The woman regards Jon again before smiling. It’s warmer this time. Her smile before was closer to obligatory. “If you don’t mind, then. I’d like that.”

Jon gets her water from the coffee shop. It would have been less awkward, and he’d have avoided the _oh-no-don’t-worry-yourself-about-me_ part of the conversation, if he had simply gone across the street to get water for her without asking. She would’ve accepted it all the same.

“Thank you,” she tells Jon sincerely, not hesitating in taking a lengthy sip.

“My pleasure,” Jon says, though it wasn’t, really. He prefers to keep to himself. He is not good at being helpful. He has not often been helped.

The woman smiles again. She goes back to her work. Jon goes back to his walk.

Jon has not used his library card in a few years. He has not had much reason to visit, after all. First, his job had taken up too much of his energy. Then he Became. He could Behold everything in this building if he so desired.

“Where is the fiction section?” Jon asks the girl at the desk. She is in high school. She has not worked here long, and is internally grateful Jon asked after the fiction, since that’s the section she knows the best.

“All our fiction is at the back. Kid and young adult fiction is closer to the front; there’s a clear marker between that and the adult fiction. It’s organized by genre and then author.” Jon Knows this.

“Thank you,” he says, and sets off toward the back.

Jon stands before the shelves marked _Thriller_. He looks over the titles and firmly pushes back the onslaught of information that threatens to bowl him over. He could Know each of these stories in their entirety, if he reached for it.

“I know I could Behold any of these,” Jon mutters into the empty aisle. Beholding perks up. Jon knows the Eye can listen, but his words are more for himself than for his god. “But I’d like to read something. It’s been a long time since I have.”

Beholding pulls back the wave, and Jon relaxes slightly. He picks out a book. It’s _The Informant_ by James Grippando.

Beholding cannot _like_ or _dislike_. It is an objective watcher. Still, Jon will think the book is bad. He will learn it for himself.

“Do you want to come out for drinks after work?” Basira asks. She is asking out of obligation. Basira expects Jon to say no.

“Who’s going?” He is hoping Martin will be there.

“Me and Melanie.” Jon grimaces at the mention of Melanie. He’d known she’d be there, but he’d hoped Basira wouldn’t say so. He tries not to be disappointed about Martin.

“I don’t think I should,” he says gently. Basira doesn’t care for him to be gentle. She’s upset with him. Melanie is upset with him.

“Suit yourself.” Basira does not try to convince him to come, and Jon does not change his mind.

When Jon cuts Melanie’s leg open, he does not ask, and he wishes he could.

When Jon pulls Daisy from the Buried, where The Eye cannot reach him, he is disgusted at how deeply he wishes it would return.

These days, Jon turns the tape recorder on as often as Beholding does. It is more than habit. Tonight, though, it lacks compulsion.

“I don’t understand,” Jon says. He… doesn’t. He Knows, and he Sees, but he does not understand.

Beholding does not think much about comprehension.

“All I seem to do is _take_. You—you make me _crave_ knowledge, and all satisfying that craving does is hurt people. I can hardly stop myself. I can hardly remind myself to want to.”

But he always asks.

“But I always ask.” Jon takes in a shuddering breath. He is crying. Why is he crying? “What good is asking, if I know they will tell me? If I can force them to? If I can Know it without having to do any of it?”

There has always been a difference between discovery between knowing between being told. Knowing something is half of Seeing. If you do not take the time to listen when someone Tells, you cannot know what it would mean to them to say it. If they never tell, you will never See how it might have changed them. A secret known matters less when the secret-holder still thinks it’s private.

Knowing is different from learning. The Eye watches. The Eye learns. The Eye can know anything, everything, if it wants to, but if it did, there would be no Institute and there would be no statements. A dream-specter covered in eyes would be a nightmare rather than a consequence.

If The Eye always Saw, from the very beginning, no one would be afraid. No one would know there was a world where secrets could be kept.

The Falling Titan cannot be feared without Choke to contrast it. Fear cannot exist if there is no comfort.

Jon is sitting curled up on his bathroom tile, sobbing. One hand clutches at the handle of the cupboard under the sink. The edge of it bites his palm.

Jon is not sad. He is regretful. He is stewing in self-hatred. He is not the type of avatar who was claimed because he could not resist; Jon gave himself wholly to Beholding, because he wants to Know. He wants to Learn.

Jon does not hate Beholding. He loves it, really. Perhaps not in the same way Jonah Magnus loves Beholding, and certainly not in the same way Simon Fairchild loves the Vast, but he does love it.

What Jon hates is that to Behold is to hurt others. The Eye does not pretend to understand this.

Jon burns his third grilled cheese. He does not recognize he is using the hottest burner on his stove. He resists the urge to bang on the counter for his frustration.

“How the fuck do I mess up grilled cheese?” he bites out, clenching his jaw and his fists. He freezes when Beholding offers the information up.

Jon does not speak again. He moves the pan over to a different burner, and makes himself lunch.

Martin is right. Jon can’t cook.

On a bad day, when the scope of the information Beholding offers him is too much for Jon to parse, he leans against a wall in the Archives and shuts his eyes and breathes. And he asks, “Where can I find a statement to—” _to eat?_ Jon does not vocalize the last part, but Beholding hears it anyway.

It pushes the information forth. A recent statement, more filling than the dusty old ones will be. The Spiral’s influence is all over it. The poor boy who gave this statement will be haunted by fractals until he dies.

Jon retrieves the statement. As he shuts the door to his office and sits down at his desk, he pauses. And then he says, “Thank you.”

Beholding is not often thanked.

Reading a statement feeds The Eye more than it feeds Jon himself. Beholding likes to have stories read to it. Jon’s voice channels the emotions within it, the mounting fear, far better than mere words on the page can. This is part of the Telling.

Jon, because he is human as much as avatar, because he is not Beholding, cannot taste it the same. Reading something himself is like eating his own vomit. He craves, rather, to listen.

If Beholding had wants, perhaps it would wish that Jon could taste his own voice the way The Eye can.

“I like documentaries,” Jon says to his empty flat, as he turns on one by BBC—The Blue Planet.

Beholding does not _like_. It appreciates documentaries nonetheless. Collections of knowledge.

“This is my favorite food,” Jon says. He is out to dinner with his coworkers. It is tense. They’re surprised, when he speaks up. He is eating a spicy chicken curry. Jon does not say it for their benefit.

“Really?” Melanie gives his plate an apprehensive look. “My eyes are watering just looking at that. How is your mouth not on fire?” Her words are stilted. She hasn’t forgiven Jon for the botched surgery. She is learning how to talk to him again.

Jon shrugs. “I like spicy food. Pass the bread?” She does, and he uses it to soak up some of the curry before eating it. The conversation halted at his comment, but picks back up slowly when he doesn’t say anything more. Jon is not embarrassed. Embarrassment is pointless to him now.

Beholding cannot taste, but it is part of Jon, and it Knows the bite of the spice as it spreads in Jon’s mouth.

In Daisy’s cabin, far away from the Panopticon and Jonah Magnus and the Institute, Beholding watches Martin Blackwood and Jonathan Sims. It is watching everything, everywhere, but it pays particular attention to its Archivist, and the Archivist’s love. It feels the approach of Jonah Magnus’ statement. It waits, anticipatory.

Martin listens to Jon as he goes about his day, making little comments out loud. He’d caught on quick that they weren’t for Martin’s benefit. He watches, amused, as Jon closes the last page of a book and says, “I liked this one.” Jon has learned that opinions are slipperier, to The Eye. They’re the most interesting to hear.

“Why do you do that?” Martin asks eventually, when the curiosity gets too much.

“Do what?”

“Just, state your opinions out loud. I know you’re not talking to me.”

Jon’s face heats. Perhaps embarrassment has not left him entirely. “Oh. Well…” he trails off. Now that he is thinking of why he does it, Jon feels silly, as though his Telling has been purposeless, stupid. His statements are not purposeless. Beholding relishes their taste.

It pushes the knowledge that Jon liked the book back at him, forcing it to the front of his mind to acknowledge. Jon blinks, and then a weird smile pulls across his face.

“It’s The Eye. It likes me to tell it things,” Jon says. Anyone else likely would’ve cringed, at that. Martin just makes a little noise of comprehension. He is adaptable. He understands that Jon cannot help these things.

“That’s kind of cute,” Martin says. Beholding is not cute.

Jon snorts out a laugh. “It doesn’t like to be called cute.” Martin blinks, his eyes widening.

“Does it— _talk_ to you?”

“Not really, but I get impressions.” Jon is grinning. Jon is happy, as much as he can be.

Jonah Magnus’ statement looms on the horizon like an oncoming storm. Jon will not be happy when it arrives. Beholding is curious, is ravenous. It wants the apocalypse as much as it can want something, but it— _likes_ The Archivist.

It’s not sure which will win out.

Beholding had not wondered what it would be like for Jon to look at it directly. It did not know what the apocalypse would bring, it could not have imagined what it would be like to have its Archivist gaze upon its visage and _see_.

“Jon. Jon, I’m scared,” Martin is babbling. The Watcher drinks this in.

“Look at the sky, Martin. Look at the _sky_. It’s looking back.”

Jon is terrified, but more than that, he is in awe. He looks upon his patron and is breathless, is enchanted, and Beholding looks back at him. For the first time, they meet each other’s eyes.

Jon laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! please let me know what you thought with a comment <3


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